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Fragmented Pieces: Writing the History of the Lost Hollywood Films 105
Lagerlöf in Hollywood: The Tower of Lies
The Tower of Lies is probably the film by Sjöström of which the complete loss
has been the most regretted by film historians, as it was based on a novel by
Selma Lagerlöf: The Emperor of Portugallia. Had the film been preserved, it
would have offered unique possibilities to compare Sjöström’s work within the
two different modes of production, as it is the only American screen version of a
Lagerlöf novel, the Swedish Nobel Prize winner whose literary sources brought
Sjöström his greatest fame as a director during the Swedish period. Still, the
surviving cutting continuity script provides some clues, as well as other preserved
source materials, such as production stills, reviews and comments.
The film was scripted by Agnes Christine Johnston, the same scriptwriter on
Confessions of a Queen, together with Max Marcin, who later made an unsuccessful
attempt to write a script for The Scarlet Letter. The film starred, as
in the successful He Who Gets Slapped, Lon Chaney and Norma Shearer. The
farmer Jan has one daughter, Glory (in Lagerlöf’s novel, she is called Klara-Gulla),
whom he adores and idealizes, and who brings joy to his hard life. When
their landlord dies, his ruthless son withdraws credit from his tenants. Glory
goes to the city to get the money, but the son follows and seduces her. She gets
the money and returns, but Jan goes mad when realizing that his daughter has
sold her body. Glory is about to leave again on a boat, as the landlord’s son falls
into the paddle wheels and dies. Jan, trying to follow, falls off the pier and
drowns. Glory then returns and marries her childhood sweetheart, August
(William Haines). The film was shot during one month, starting on 6 May 1925,
and premiered on 11 October. (FIG. 18)
The film was ambiguously received by the critics. Mordaunt Hall, as usual,
commented it in The New York Times, this time quite sceptically: “As this Swedish
narrative is told, it is more of a short story or a sketch than a photodrama.” 23
However, he concludes that: “in certain stretches, the hand of Victor Seastrom,
the artist, is revealed.” 24 In Photoplay, the critic states that: “If the director had
been as concerned with telling the story as he was with thinking up symbolic
scenes, this would have been a great picture. As it is, Victor Seastrom was so
busy being artistic that he forgot to be human.” 25
This is the first time that a new theme appears in the reviews, where Sjöström
is accused of being a formalist at the cost of precisely those human, dramatic or
psychological qualities that formerly had been celebrated, not least in his Swedish
productions. However, the film was also praised in particular for its narrative
techniques, this time more elaborated. Forslund has also quoted an American
critic in this connection: